Install Kong Operator

The Kong Operator can deploy and manage Data Planes connected to a Konnect Control Plane. Configuration for services, routes, and plugins is managed entirely through Konnect and propagated automatically to Data Planes.

Create the kong namespace in your Kubernetes cluster, which is where the Getting Started guide will run:

kubectl create namespace kong

1. Add the Kong Helm charts:

   helm repo add kong https://charts.konghq.com
   helm repo update
   

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2. Install Kong Gateway Operator using Helm:

   helm upgrade --install kong-operator kong/kong-operator -n kong-system \
     --create-namespace \
     --set image.tag=2.0.2 \
     --set env.ENABLE_CONTROLLER_KONNECT=true
   

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If you want cert-manager to issue and rotate the admission and conversion webhook certificates, install cert-manager to your cluster and enable cert-manager integration by passing the following argument while installing:

--set global.webhooks.options.certManager.enabled=true

If you do not enable this, the chart will generate and inject self-signed certificates automatically. We recommend enabling cert-manager to manage the lifecycle of these certificates.

If you want cert-manager to issue and rotate the admission and conversion webhook certificates, install cert-manager to your cluster and enable cert-manager integration by passing the following argument while installing:

--set global.webhooks.options.certManager.enabled=true

If you do not enable this, the chart will generate and inject self-signed certificates automatically. We recommend enabling cert-manager to manage the lifecycle of these certificates.

Wait for readiness

Wait for the Kong Operator’s controller deployment to become available before proceeding, ensuring it’s ready to manage resources:

kubectl -n kong-system wait --for=condition=Available=true --timeout=120s deployment/kong-operator-kong-operator-controller-manager

deployment.apps/kong-operator-kong-operator-controller-manager condition met

if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
  echo "Did not receive the expected return code"
fi

Once the Kong Operator is ready, you can begin provisioning Gateway Control Planes and Data Planes using Konnect CRDs.